


Paralysed

by hypno_sis



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Maybe - Freeform, Post-War, Sleep Paralysis, Sleep Paralysis Demon, ghost - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:15:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28411512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hypno_sis/pseuds/hypno_sis
Summary: Hermione had asked him once if he felt like a mind in a body or a body with a mind. Harry hadn’t understood the question then.He understands it nowperfectly.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Voldemort
Comments: 1
Kudos: 34





	Paralysed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Duender](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duender/gifts).



> For my [sister](https://www.archiveofourown.org/users/Duender/pseuds/Duender), and all the nightmares you kicked out to make space for yourself. Thank you.

Hermione had asked him once if he felt like a mind in a body or a body with a mind. Harry hadn’t understood the question then.   
  


He understands it now _perfectly._

His mind screams at him to do something, _anything,_ to make it stop. It hammers the inside of his skull like it’s a door that must be broken down, shakes Harry from the inside as if it’s trying to jolt him awake. 

But that’s the problem, isn’t it?

His body is asleep, but Harry is very, _very_ awake.

He sucks in a breath, except… he _doesn’t._ His diaphragm refuses to cooperate with him, and all he can think is _I’ll never take breathing for granted again_ as he struggles to get his lungs to unfold. He would be hyperventilating if he had the luxury of letting air in.

He feels the bubble of a breath stuck in his throat swell, swell till the cartilage rings of his throat feel like snapping, yet his muscles refuse to move. He’s desperate for air, scared out of his mind, and he cannot move even his pinky.

What does Hermione do to calm herself down before an exam he knows she’s going to ace?

Deep breaths. Yeah, not an option.  
  


Pacing. Not an option either.

Rambling on and on about anything. His jaw seems to be stuck shut, so that’s not an option either.

Harry’s mind takes this as official permission to panic.

  
He lays in bed, body deceptively still, screaming on the inside. Even though the room is drenched in darkness, some spots seem to flash darker. It’s like clouds of black ink are swirling around him, and he can’t tell if what is happening is real.

The swirls and flashes lighten for a moment, and something milky coalesces at the foot of the bed. Tendrils not unlike dense, white smoke creep in from the open window- _had he opened the window before going to bed?_ \- and snake around each other. It’s beautiful in a way, or would have been, if not for the eerie red glow and the shimmering, transparent white face.  
  


Harry tries harder to scream than he does to breathe, but not even the spectre in front of him convinces his body to wake up.

* * *

Sleep paralysis, Hermione says as the three of them levitate a particularly big piece of what had been the wall of a classroom. Nothing serious and a little disconcerting at the most.

Harry wouldn’t call what had happened the night before just ‘a little disconcerting’. A little disconcerting is swallowing a chocolate brown jelly bean that tastes like dirt. Last night is closer to wanting to burn his bed and never sleep again.

Later, when they’re sitting by the Black Lake, sprawled on grass which still smells like smoke and feels like ash, he tells them about the white and red… _thing_ he’d seen. Hermione says that hallucinations are common during sleep paralysis and goes off on a tangent about sleep cycles, whatever they are, lazily runs her hand through Ron’s hair who’s already falling asleep. 

  
  


It had felt so _real._

Harry knows that all the horcruxes are gone and it’s not possible. Yet, he cannot bring himself to believe that it was just a hallucination. He didn’t even look like a ghost. Harry had never seen anything like that, and Hermione said that she’d never heard of humanoid magical creatures which looked like white smoke and blood. It _had_ to be a hallucination. 

If only knowing that it wasn’t real and _feeling_ that it wasn’t real were one and the same thing.

* * *

He hadn’t even noticed when he’d fallen asleep, he’d tried not to, but he’s awake now. If this can be called wakefulness.

Temporary.

A familiar terror sets in; a primal, instinctive terror that doesn’t listen to any reasoning.

Temporary.

If anything, his chest wants to cave in, but of course, nothing moves.

Temporary?

Nothing moves except for the white smoke shaping itself into Voldemort. 

A coldness seeps into his bones, the kind of cold that makes you think that you’ll never know what warmth is again.

* * *

He drags himself to the Hospital Wing without protest when Ron and Hermione tell him to. He hates the Hospital Wing, but he hates sleeping and waking up to a nightmare more.

Madame Pomfrey checks him over and hands him a vial of Dreamless Sleep. If it works on dreams, she says, it should work on the strange visions he’s been seeing for the past two nights. After all, that’s what it is, isn’t it?

A waking nightmare.

Harry pockets the vial and walks back to the dorms with Ron. The heavy glass does nothing to lessen the solidifying dread Harry feels when he looks at the bed. 

Once they’re done with their nightly routines, Ron collapses into his bed. Harry uncorks the vial, swallows and pulls the covers over his head. 

* * *

“You’re going to side with her too, aren’t you?”

Ron rubs the nape of his neck, looks sideways and says, “Well, mate, what Hermione’s saying does make sense. You died, for Merlin’s sake! There’s no way any of his-”

Harry suppresses the urge to make a sarcastic remark at Ron’s expense. It’s like Draco Malfoy in Sixth Year all over again and he doesn't intend to let his side go unheard and unacknowledged, if only to say _I told you so_ later. “Him appearing three nights in a row is not a coincidence! The Dreamless Sleep didn’t work! It’s not just a nightmare, there’s _something_ left-”

Hermione rests a hand on his shoulder. When she speaks, her voice has the cadence of a pedagogue. Harry hates it. “Harry, I know it’s scary-” Harry scoffs, “but even Madame Pomfrey says it’s sleep paralysis and nothing more. It didn’t work because you’re awake when you hallucinate.” Her voice grows softer, and Harry’s irritation spikes. “And nobody’s siding against you, we’re trying to help.” _Sure doesn’t feel like it._

“Then tell me why I keep seeing him!”

“Mate, hallucinations aren’t-”

He gets up, hisses “Forgive me for not wanting Voldemort to come back!” and storms out of the Great Hall.

* * *

  
  


That night, he listens to Ron’s breaths grow shallow and even as sleep pulls him under. He pulls his Invisibility Cloak on and pads out of the room; he has no intention of sleeping tonight. 

People say that you eventually get used to pain, that it becomes so much a part of you that you recognise it more when it is gone.   
  
What a bunch of lies.   
  


Considering the years of Voldemort-themed nightmares Harry’s had, he should be used to it. He’s never considered going so far as to avoid sleeping, as unpleasant and sickening those nightmares were. This feels _different_. It’s nothing more than another nightmare; this one just plays in front of open eyes in a paralysed body, yet…

Harry rubs at his bleary eyes and walks through the corridors. Whatever paintings there are left on the walls are snoring faintly. He runs a hand across a deep, jagged crack in the ancient stone, then turns to face the Quidditch pitch. 

The grass crunches and crumbles under his feet and colors them black. They haven’t gotten around to fixing the pitch yet. There are more important things to repair than a field of grass no one dares fly above just yet. It’ll take a while for the habits and memories of war to leach out of everyone.

He settles on the stands and looks up at the sky. The moon is right above, dotted with craters and obstructed by a lone cloud. The sky’s been gradually getting clearer, and all of a sudden he’s reminded of Dumbledore. The corner of his mouth twitches like it doesn't know whether to move up or down. 

He’s thinking again, about what had happened in King’s Cross, if that _was_ King’s Cross, and the bloodied, grime covered body of Voldemort’s… soul? The frail looking baby, so grotesque that his reflex is to look away, stop thinking about it even when he’s just thinking about it.

He doesn’t know how long he sits there, but the next time he opens his eyes, the sky is still dark with the blush of dawn on the horizon. The rosy glow does not complement the chalky skin and bloody eyes at all. His mind goes in overdrive, his lungs shrivel and crumble like the dead, ashy grass, and all the while, Voldemort stares at him with a piercing intensity.

Harry still tries to scream. His body still fails him.

* * *

  
  


Hermione keeps an eye on him when the sun goes down and it gets dark as if she’s pinning him, caging him, making sure he doesn’t run away. They’re close, but it doesn’t explain the strange way Ron attaches himself to Harry when they arrange sleeping bags in front of the crackling fire in an otherwise empty Common room. 

Harry plays along. Pretends he doesn’t notice the looks Ron and Hermione share, pretends he doesn’t notice that their breaths never deepen the way they do when they’re asleep. He would have been offended (do they really think he hasn’t listened to them sleep on enough nights to not know?), but he has other things on his mind, and he’s never quite learnt how to not focus on one thing at a time.

He guesses that he should be touched, but frankly, he can’t bring himself to not be selfish- they’re not the ones who are too afraid to go to sleep. He turns, and tosses, and somehow every time he gets up to sneak out Ron and Hermione wake up with parched throats. 

So he pinches himself in his cozy sleeping bag and tries to not fall asleep. Ah, but he’s fighting a losing battle, and he hopes- that at least, this night, he won’t be alone, he won’t be alone with a monster.

* * *

Harry stops talking about the- hallucination? Ghost? Whatever it is that haunts his nights after then.

His magic grows sloppier and worry sets in the creases of his face as the sun goes down every day. Hermione quietly leaves vials of Dreamless Sleep by his sleeping things. He tips a vial down the sink every night. 

He no longer tries to stay awake- the terror of what is to come later keeps him up till his body screams at him and shuts down. Only to wake up to Voldemort bleeding white and red smoke, floating in front of him like a terrible, faithful companion.

Life goes on as normal.

Hermione goes back to see her parents when the weekend is around the corner. Ron and Harry share tea and a plate of biscuits with the Headmistress. They visit Hagrid and whatever creature he’s tending to that day and plod back to the castle as their shadows grow longer. Ron complains about how they have treacle tart every day but eats them anyway, Harry lays in bed every night knowing what will come, telling himself that it’s a hallucination; not even Ron and Hermione could see him. As if repetition will make him feel like he’s telling himself the truth.

And when he’s not scared, he’s angry, and confused- why him? Are his hands so stained with blood that he must see it whenever he closes his eyes?

Every night, his mind wakes up screaming but his body doesn’t, and you’d think that experiencing this every night would make it easier, but it’s like it’s the first night every day. The wound still oozes fresh blood, even if it’s weeks old now. 

It’s just a hallucination, he tries to tell his panicking mind every night, just a hallucination. 

* * *

He’s a mind in a frozen body, a corpse. Like every night before. Like every night after. Lungs so empty that he feels his chest trying to cave in, but of course, nothing moves. A poet would find it something to romanticize- this chaos of fright in the spirit and temporary death of the body- but this is Harry’s life and not a piece of magical writing, and so he suffers unironically.

Hallucination, he tries to yell over the panicked static of his mind. Hallucination.

White smoke, blood red tendrils for eyes. Hallucination.

He just stands there and stares at Harry, like he always does. Straight through him like a powerful laser. Harry would give anything to look away right now, but of course he can’t. So he settles into a staring contest he’s been forced into, and waits for his body to unfreeze so he can breathe again.

  
  
  
  
  


The smoke moves. 

  
  
  


A wispy hand reaches out towards Harry. Voldemort is still staring at him. 

  
  


He watches four bony fingers fold into his palm, pointer finger out, with a sharp, shimmering nail on his smoky finger.

  
  


The finger presses against his scar. 

His lungs finally unfold.

**Author's Note:**

> Technically did get it done by New Year's, but I'm not entirely happy with it, so expect some editing later ":D but feel free to tell me what you liked and what you didn't, it makes my day <3


End file.
